Cost-Effective Upgrades

So, you’ve started homebrewing, you’ve got a few batches under your belt, learned a couple of lessons along the way, and you want to keep pursuing the hobby.  Once you find that you might be willing to invest a little more money in your setup, there are a few items that are not essential by any means to brewing great beer, but they can make the process a little easier. 

I’d like to note that there is almost no limit to how much money you can pour into your homebrewing setup.  This post is more geared toward the budget-conscious brewer, looking for some high-payoff upgrades to make brew day and bottling day go a little smoother.  Also, all of these upgrades are applicable to both extract and all-grain brewing, so if you have your sights set on all grain in the future, all of these items will carry over to that process (which we’ll cover in a later post). 

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

A wort chiller  will save a ton of time on brew day, simply by cutting back on the time it takes to cool the wort.  These are typically pretty affordable if you just pick one up at the homebrew store, but for those inventive types, they’re also simple to make using pieces you can get at the hardware store.

An extra fermentor  is really handy to have, especially if you want to do secondary fermentation or condition your beer for a while before you bottle it.  A 5-gallon carboy (glass or plastic) is a popular choice for these applications, since the yeast is no longer hard at work.  However, another bucket identical to your primary fermentor works just fine and is probably less than half the price.

A beer thief and hydrometer tube can make taking your gravity readings a piece of cake.  Instead of sanitizing your hydrometer and then dunking it into the fermentor bucket and trying to get a reading, you can just sanitize the thief, draw out a sample, put it in the tube and take an eye level measurement.  Also, it allows you to set the sample aside if you want to wrap up your brew before recording the OG.  Another note, I’ve used a turkey baster for this application, and that works fine.  If you have a questionable seal between the bulb and the tube, you may get some drips, but having the tube on hand to quickly make the transfer works out okay.

Upgrading your brew pot  has several advantages.  First, if you get an 8-gallon size or larger, you can do full volume boils (instead of adding water at the end to top it off).  This isn’t a requirement to make great beer, but it does prepare you for all-grain batches in the future where you need to boil the full batch.  If you plan on getting a new pot, I would advise splurging for a pot with a ball valve and a thermometer.  They will cost a little more, but it is totally worth it.  Two brief notes on this upgrade.  First, while it’s possible to cool the full batch with an ice bath, it will take longer with a higher volume.  Thus, a wort chiller becomes even more helpful with a bigger pot.  Second, you’ll want to make sure your stove or burner will be able to bring 6.5 gallons or so of water to a boil in a timely manner.  More on this below.

A propane burner will give you more heating capacity than the typical stove, allowing you to bring your wort to a boil before the week is over.  Additionally, this upgrade allows you to brew outside, which is always fun, and probably appreciated by those with whom you might share the kitchen.  When selecting a burner, the higher the BTUs, the shorter your time to heat water, thus the shorter your brew day.  I have a 220,000 BTU burner, and it is awesome.  Smaller burners work fine too, and the trusty interwebs have plenty of discussion (and math if you’re in to that sort of thing) that can give a ballpark on how much time you’re looking at for each BTU level.

On bottling day, having a bottle drying rack is really helpful when you’re trying to sanitize 50 bottles (and keep them sanitized).  You can purchase these in a variety of forms.  The little “trees” are cool, but you do have to sanitize them first (if you’re using a quick sanitizer, no big deal, but if it takes 30 minutes, something to consider).  I personally like something that has holes in which the bottle necks can fit upside down.  This way nothing comes in to contact with the mouth of the bottle or the inside.  These are available to purchase, but also very easy to make.  Mine (which was actually given to me by a friend) is two pieces of plywood with 25 holes drilled into each and L-brackets connecting them to four legs.  It is pretty compact when storing, fits on the counter nicely when drying, and allows up to 50 bottles to dry at a time. 

One more substantial upgrade to your brew set up is moving from bottling to kegging.  This is significantly more expensive than the above equipment, and much more involved.  As such, I’ll leave the details for a later post, but suffice it to say, kegging makes “bottling day” much quicker.

So there you have it.  As I said, you can spend thousands on setup upgrades, and if you have the money, go for it and send me pictures so I can be jealous.  But if not, hopefully some of these ideas can make your brew and bottling days just a little smoother.